How to Delete Previous Owner Backups HP Pavilion/Vista

Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
HP Pavilion m9250f puts backups on the second HDD ( E: )
It has a front panel button marked, "HP Easy Backup" and there are a lot of previous owners backups in there.
Internet research tell me there is a "first" backup that was created on first startup. Is it important to not delete that?
Can I just open Windows Explorer and manually delete the previous owners backups? No harm no foul?

Edit: Apparently E colon (right paren) means smiley face.
 
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shteii01

Joined Feb 19, 2010
4,644
HP Pavilion m9250f puts backups on the second HDD (E:)
It has a front panel button marked, "HP Easy Backup" and there are a lot of previous owners backups in there.
Internet research tell me there is a "first" backup that was created on first startup. Is it important to not delete that?
Can I just open Windows Explorer and manually delete the previous owners backups? No harm no foul?
It seems to be like a regular pc. Yes, you can just open file manager and start deleting. Since it is on the second drive and that drive does not contain OS, you can delete individual files or you can format the whole drive, but formatting will delete everything.

Also. Do you have copy of Windows in case you need to reinstall it in the future?

What kind of backup does it do? Do you know? Does it just copy files/folders or does it make an image of the primary drive?
 

Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Not that this has anything to do with the backups on the E: drive, but there is a partition with a backup of the OS which I just installed. Now I'm trying to get it back to virgin status by removing the personal file backups left by the previous owner.
 
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JohnInTX

Joined Jun 26, 2012
4,787
You might want to use Disk Management in Control Panel (XP) / Control Panel ->System and Security->Administrative Tools (Win7) to format individual partitions on a physical drive.

Select Graphical View for one of the windows, highlight the partition and format it under Action.

You usually can delete a partition completely and add the freed up space to an existing one as well.

Have fun.
 

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Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I don't want to format the drive. I was asking if I can just delete the personal backup files without causing a registry problem or end up with Backup Wizard spending several minutes looking for all those missing backups.
 

Alec_t

Joined Sep 17, 2013
14,280
Before deleting files you could rename them (e.g. add a leading 'z' to the file names), then see if Windows complains. If it doesn't, then deletion should cause no probs.
 

Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
or I could just not empty the recycle bin until I find out of the backup program is going to complain.
 
If I took ownership of someones else's computer, the first thing I'd do is reinstall the OS from scratch. There must be recovery disks for it. Who knows what lurks in the OS from the last user.
 

Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
If I took ownership of someones else's computer, the first thing I'd do is reinstall the OS from scratch. There must be recovery disks for it. Who knows what lurks in the OS from the last user.
Yes, I did reinstall the O.S.
There are no recovery disks. There is a recovery partition.

I shall now make a DVD backup with an external program like Norton Ghost or Acronis so I don't trigger the, "one copy only" restriction. (Anything to ensure the computer goes to the dump instead of getting repaired when the HDD fails.) The only problem right now is that I ran out of DL DVD's.:(

A bit of shuffling and I will have my personal files on the second HDD. (That keeps them from getting whacked when I install a backup copy on the C: drive.) Always fun to move into a newer, faster computer. Sharing through my wi-fi makes file copying a breeze.:p
 

Miss Kelly

Joined Nov 9, 2013
6
I must say, this thread was educational for me. I bought a new laptop a few months ago. I hadn't planned to at the time, but the baptismal rite performed by the cat, coupled with the age of the previous laptop, made it kind of a no-brainer. The new one has Windowas 8, which has been a bit of a learning curve after Windows Vista. I'm slowly catching on. Anyhoo, this thread provided some tips and tricks that I might find useful down the road. Thanks guys.
 

Thread Starter

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
You never know. A crowd of nerds thinks they are going right over the heads of spectators and one steps up saying, "Thanks".

You're welcome. We do this in public so other people can see what's going on in the basement. :D
 
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